Gamers On Trial: The ECA's Hal Halpin on Consumer Advocacy

GS: On the entirely opposite end of the spectrum, or maybe
not: last time we spoke, we talked about the difficulty of selling AO
[ESRB rated "Adults-Only"] games, particularly on the retail level. I
was wondering what sort of benefits the ECA could offer for that
audience?

HH: Well, in terms of the retail
landscape, I think that that's probably changed with the merger of the
IEMA and the SDA. The SDA is much more open to adult content. They're
partnering with the Adult Entertainment Expo, and they have a lot of
members who buy and sell and rent adult content.

That
said, I'm not sure. I just don't know, in terms of the ECA, whether
that would be something that we might want to tackle, that our members
feel strongly about, above and beyond talking about it. But I do think
it's important to inform our members about what's going on.

GS: As far as staff goes, how many people on a sort of full-time basis do you envision being dedicated to the ECA.

HH:
I actually gave this a little bit of thought! I’m not sure, because I'm
not sure how many full-time internal people are going to be required. I
have warned our IT department that there's going to be this need that's
going to be expanding, and I was really pleasantly surprised by some of
the early members wanting to be involved. "What can we do? How can we
do more?" And I was thinking actually of copying the CMP model of sort
of empowering them by employing them through volunteerism, and people
who have proven themselves as leaders on other forums online, and other
communities, or proving themselves through us over time, could be
empowered to help on a volunteer basis. So it would put less strain on
our internal staff, and allow us to focus on new initiatives, and also
leave people who are best at it to do it, rather than us training and
developing guidelines.

HH:
There are. There are a few other initiatives that we've been working
on, including the newsletter and other things that we haven't fully
developed yet. However, for financial modeling purposes, we only use
the membership at present.

GS: Now, you're
talking about distributing these cards in game packages, and placing
ads in enthusiast magazines, but these are people who are already, for
lack of a better word, "hardcore" gamers. Are there plans in place to
reach out to a more general audience?

HH:
Yes, though there's nothing in place yet. We have had internal
discussions about partnering with parenting magazines and other media
that could reach them. One of the conversations I had just within the
last hour or two with our PR firm is perhaps us creating documentation
that we could give away to media, that they would be able to reproduce,
so it wouldn't be a burden on them editorially, and we'd be able to get
a) some branding for us, b) a place for parents to go, rather than come
to us and to other sources that might not be so fruitful, and c) it
gives that readership empowerment and knowledge about what's going on
and the issues. So that's one of the new things that we've just
recently talked about, actually. We're only a week in! [laughs]

GS: And we're grilling you! [laughs] How has the response been from the development community?

HH:
I've noticed some developers whose company names I noticed in the URL
from when they joined, but generally speaking I've heard really nice,
resounding supportive reaction from both publishers and developers.
I've come to know a handful of developers from having gone to GDC and
speaking on panels, and just sort of walking with my eyes open, because
my fifteen year career is pretty much on the opposite end of the
industry from them.

So every year I go to GDC just
trying to learn more and trying to understand more. That leads to me
knowing very few people on the development side, and so the ones I know
I try to look regularly to for feedback. So…so far, so good! I think
probably the whole industry, regardless of where you are, is in this
sort of wait and see mode. Like, oh, this is really interesting, this
has a lot of potential, this could be great…now, let's see you do some
stuff!